Learning to love the dinosaurs

In my youth, it was easy to tell the dinosaurs from the technologically competent: The dinosaurs couldn't program their VCRs. However, despite their helplessness at what I perceived as a simple task, I still looked on many of them with respect. After all, while I was a whiz at anything that involved parallel wiring or potentiometers, I was pretty clueless if you stuck a wrench in my hand and said "stop the water from gushing out of the sink."

Somewhere between those days and now, I underwent a strange metamorphosis. I can do a number of basic technological things. For example, I still write the HTML for my websites. But as I grew older, it seems I became less technological savvy. Now when a program suddenly starts spewing gibberish, I call my son, who clicks around until it somehow works again. I'm not sure how or exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way I stopped caring about the latest innovation. The older I get, the less time I want to spend "keeping up."

Ironically, I'm discovering some advantages to Dinosaurism. For example, I used to love buying CDs, but had to be very selective in what I acquired because of the cost. Now that everyone is converting the music to MP3s and discarding their CDs, I'm adding stacks of new discs to my own library at a tiny fraction of their original cost. Yes, I have a lot of room tied up in storing shelves of CDs and DVDs. But I'm okay with that. I never felt comfortable with the idea of containing all of my media on a hard drive. Besides, while I'm aware of lossless audio file formats, the MP3s that most people are filling their ipods with are of inferior sound quality. Convenience is actually more important to the less fanatical than I. I understand that. But I am happy perfectly happy amassing all those cast off discs, clogging up my personal space and life. So there.

Anyway, there comes a point in life when "keeping up" is just not as important. I'm aware that change is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing. But the wonderful thing about our lives in this era is that we can pick and choose which innovations we want to incorporate into our lifestyle.

I am computer savvy enough to get by for all the tasks that I need to accomplish, and for anything else, I have three children who are more than happy to show off what they know. After all, when the water is gushing onto the floor and my children stand there helpless, I grab a wrench and remind them that there are somethings you still can't fix with ctl+alt+dlt.